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This article examines the Finnish industrial and trade fairs held in the Soviet Union in the context of Finnish-Soviet trade and scientific-technical cooperation in the 1950s and 1960s. While primarily focused on fairs, italso discusses different activities that accompanied them, such as lectures, visits, and negotiations between Finnish traders and Soviet officials and specialists. This study illustrates how such first-hand contact played an important role in Finnish-Soviet communications. First, they helped Finnish producers showcase their goods and technologies directly to Soviet buyers in various ministries and organizations. Second, these contacts included diverse activities such as face-to-face contacts, lectures, and seminars, being a means of technology transfer from Finland to the USSR. Finally, although they were commercial interactions without explicit ideological purposes - like many international exhibitions of the last century - Finnish fairs demonstrated a technological gap between Finland and the USSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of users is an often-overlooked aspect of studies of innovation and diffusion. Using an actor-network theory (ANT) approach, four case studies examine the processes of implementing a piece of CAD (computer aided design) software, BSLink, in different organisations and describe the tailoring done by users to embed the software into working practices. This not only results in different practices of use at different locations, but also transforms BSLink itself into a proliferation of BSLinks-in-use. A focus group for BSLink users further reveals the gaps between different users' expectations and ways of using the software, and between different BSLinks-in-use. It also demonstrates the contradictory demands this places on its further development. The ANT-informed approach used treats both innovation and diffusion as processes of translation within networks. It also emphasises the political nature of innovation and implementation, and the efforts of various actors to delegate manoeuvres for increased influence onto technological artefacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the view that the success of emerging technologies may be understood using a technological innovation systems analysis, drawing on a system functions approach. This is done in the context of a case study of the successful diffusion of biomass digestion technology in Germany. We show that that all system functions that are claimed to be important within the innovation systems approach are present in the German Biomass Innovation System; and that these system functions positively interact leading to virtuous cycles and a rapid growth of the German Biomass Digestion Innovation System. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms increasingly consider external technology commercialisation (ETC) - the commercialisation of technology assets - as an important part of their strategies. ETC goes beyond the marginal activity of commercialising residual technologies, yet prior research has not systematically analysed its monetary and strategic benefits, nor has much been published about the process of managing ETC. Accordingly this paper offers a classification of ETC objectives based on case studies of 25 technology-oriented companies. A detailed segmentation of the process of managing these projects is established by focussing on large industrial companies whose main business is internal technology exploitation (i.e. the application of technologies in their own products and/or services). Based on these classifications, four types of external technology exploitation projects are identified and the different managerial challenges are described along the process segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on technology transfer and diffusion. Technology transfer is the complex social process that moves technology from bench to market and drives global economic growth. Technical diffusion is the process by which innovations are adopted and implemented. The two may be considered synonymous with the phenomenon of growth in a global economy. A report shows that global research and development spending is advancing with more international research collaboration and alliances than ever before.

The success of strategies of changing or establishing innovation systems is indicated by scientific and technological innovations, the number of new products and patents, the prosperity of regions and firms and the creation of new jobs. However, there is also a less visible outcome of the innovation process in regard to knowledge creation, redesign of cultural software of what is understood as innovation and in new management concepts to maintain and generate organizational innovativeness. The papers in this issue contribute to the identification of blockages to innovation and means of overcoming them related to the latter issue. The first blockage to innovation is the human capital dilemma of insufficient trained persons in innovation management; a second is the paucity of effective organizational mechanisms to realize the full potential of innovations that have been achieved in one environment to transfer them to where they are needed in another. The capacity to integrate innovation mechanisms and carry out technological and organizational transfer is the issue here. With a focus on the less invisible indicators of innovation a new understanding of the management of innovation is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the post-independence industrialization experience of Algeria, this paper explores the need for and the challenges and prospects of shifts of policies and strategies from central planning to decentralization and liberalization; from a heavy industry-dominated scenario to one dominated by SMEs; and from reliance on technology transfer to the development of a culture of innovation and technological learning. The paper highlights the business incubation system as an aspect of the triple helix model of innovation in which universities, industry, government and non-government organizations feature as principal actors in the national innovation system. The paper notes the need for both technology transfer and the development of the triple helix culture in developing countries. It also underlines the need for policy in developing countries to ensure that the former played only a residual role, while the latter took the lead in providing for the development of a culture of innovation. The culture of bureaucracy and institutional fragmentation has been a major factor militating against initiatives for technological capability development; and the conventional technology transfer practice has reinforced this culture. A major policy initiative is needed in developing countries to put the national system of innovation in place and remove the constraints on the development of the triple helix culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]